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And like how she had seen the quiet red welts on her ass in the bathroom mirror this morning before the falling water in the shower set them aflame.
She lived among the nuances of language, the many shades of meaning a singular word could possess, but until a few days ago, until Jonathan, she hadn’t understood there existed such fine distinctions of sensation, of pain, each rare and extraordinary in its texture, each a world she wanted to explore from within.
She hadn’t asked him to go last night, and he didn’t leave until early this morning. Three a.m., or perhaps four; time was lost to her after what he had done to her body.
She didn’t hear him get up and put on his clothes; she had only the fuzzy memory of her back suddenly cold under the blanket, until she slipped into sleep again, alone.
When she awoke, dust motes hung suspended in piercing rays of morning light.
And now her phone on the faded teak table vibrated with the sound of a text. She fantasized it was Leigh calling to tell her Nely had to cancel because of some emergency and reschedule for the first week of never.
Or Jonathan informing her his trip was postponed.
It was hard to say which of those scenarios she wanted more.
Only she did know.
She didn’t smoke, always wore her seat belt, drank only socially and lightly, and rarely consumed more than a cup or two of coffee every morning. Her life was pathetically light on bad habits.
Except for Jonathan Jaines. He had hardly been gone from her house, from her body, for twelve hours, but he was becoming an addiction.
The phone was warm from the sun when she picked it up.
At airport waiting for my flight out. I should be home by 8 next Thursday night. I'll text you when I land. Meet at my place since you'll be in the city? Have a good week. Give 'em hell. -J.
Last night she hadn’t asked about his trip or his plans or how long he would be away; there had been something calming, untouchable, about their silence.
She sucked the droplet of blood from her finger and squeezed the pad until another emerged.
A week?
She put the phone in her pocket and kneeled by the bushes to gather the pulled weeds and cut stems into a pile. In the past she would have been careful to avoid the piercing thorns.
A week.
Into the big green garden waste bag they went, and she dragged the bag to the side of the house by the trash bins.
She went inside and upstairs to the bathroom. Okay, it might be good he was out of town, because there was no escaping the mess that stared back at her from the mirror.
Locks of stringy hair had fallen out of the rough ponytail she had gathered this morning; smudges of dirt marked her cheek and forehead; beads of sweat rested in the fine hair above her upper lip.
A week.
She washed her face and hands, the hands he had bound with what felt like leather cuffs last night. In the vanity drawer, she felt around for the vibrator she used to keep in there and turned it on.
It wheezed and fell silent.
She hadn’t touched it since Harris died. Tending to her libido, once it stirred again after many months, had seemed wrong—disrespectful and trivial.
What was she supposed to think about while some silicone toy whirred inside her? Him? That was too painful, but it also had felt shameful to think about anythingexcepthim.
But more than a year had passed now, the fucking magic year after which she suddenly was supposed to be whole again, healed and ready to go on, a smile pasted from ear to ear.
Besides, she’d fucked another man. No sense worrying about disrespect and triviality any longer; shitty widow that she was, that line she had crossed.
She went downstairs to the utility room to find fresh batteries and snapped them into place.
With a press of the button, the toy buzzed to life. She turned it off and shimmied out of her jeans, leaving them damp with sweat on the floor in front of the washer.
